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Press Release

The IRS is re-defining social welfare group activity to regulate tea party and patriot groups out of existence

Washington, DC- After months of educating citizens on proposed IRS rules changes that would cripple and effectively eliminate 501(c)(4) civic engagement activity, FreedomWorks submitted official comments to the IRS on behalf of its 6 million members nationwide. The document, signed by FreedomWorks Executive Vice President Adam Brandon, listed the organization’s many objections, along with a call for field hearings.

FreedomWorks has been directing its membership to submit comments in protest on the IRS website before the February 27 deadline through IRSTarget.com, which redirects right to the IRS official comment page. To date, the IRSTarget website has received over 33,000 visits redirecting to the IRS comment page, and the IRS has received a total of almost 76,200 comments.

“FreedomWorks is calling for field hearings that would allow citizens to testify and voice their concerns with the proposed rules changes,” Brandon commented. “We want to hear from the bureaucrats who wrote these rules, and get a definition on what exactly constitutes a ‘social welfare group.’ We want to know how this program will be safeguarded against abuse, and how specifically the IRS plans to ensure that the targeting scandal against conservatives and libertarians will not repeat itself.”

“It's not the IRS's responsibility to determine what constitutes a ‘social welfare group.’ It's not their responsibility to intimidate individual Americans who are trying to partake in their basic civic duties, and it's certainly not their responsibility to figure out ways to regulate specific kinds of groups out of existence. This isn't a partisan issue- it's a matter of free speech. Today it's conservative and tea party groups, but a couple years down the road it could be another demographic of Americans facing this kind of bureaucratic censorship.”

The proposed rules changes would suppress the ability of grassroots groups – of any political affiliation – to organize and participate in basic civic engagement activity, including voter registration drives, voter education and non-partisan candidate forums. Many non-profit organizers would have to hire lawyers in order to ensure that they are complying with the complicated rules, an impossible expense for smaller “mom and pop” patriot groups meeting in local communities. Some well-intended activists will undoubtedly break the unclear laws without even knowing it.

FreedomWorks is a grassroots service center to a community of over 6 million activists who believe in individual liberty and constitutionally-limited government. For more information, please visit www.FreedomWorks.org or contact Jackie Bodnar at JBodnar@FreedomWorks.org.

Key members of the House Freedom Caucus are demanding that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen be removed from office. In an op-ed written for the Wall Street Journal, Reps. Jim Jordan and Ron DeSantis told President Obama that if the Commissioner is not removed, they will begin the proceedings to impeach him.

Arizona's civil asset forfeiture laws lack any real protections for law-abiding citizens and their property. In direct contradiction with the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which guarantee the right of due process, the property owner, who may never be charged with a crime, bears the burden to prove that his property is innocent before he can get it back. That is why the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of Arizona's forfeiture laws.

More Americans paid ObamaCare's individual mandate tax for 2014 than previously estimated, according to a new report from the Internal Revenue Service's National Taxpayer Advocate. In January, the Treasury Department projected that up to 6 million households would be subject to the tax because they did not purchase a government-approved health insurance plan.

The Internal Revenue Service has agreed to give back nearly $108,000 it wrongfully seized from a North Carolina convenience store owner in July 2014. In dismissing the case against the seized cash, the powerful tax agency cited a policy change announced by the Justice Department in March that restricted civil asset forfeiture in so-called "structuring" cases where the individual from whom the money is seized is not charged with a crime.

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Lyndon McLellan is the owner of a convenience store in Fairmont, North Carolina, a small town just up I-95 from the state's border with South Carolina. On the advice of a bank teller, McLellan began making deposits below $10,000 to save the bank burdensome paperwork required under the Bank Secrecy Act, a 1970 law aimed at deterring money laundering and a host of other crimes, including illicit drug activity.

Carole Hinders is an Iowa restauranteur who, in 2013, made several bank deposits under $10,000. She thought she was doing everyone a favor by keeping her transactions under $10,000, but this harmless activity caught the attention of the Internal Revenue Service.

As one of our more than 6.9 million FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative today and ask him or her to support the Fair Treatment for All Donations Act, H.R. 1104. Introduced by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL), this bill would help preserve first amendment rights by preventing the IRS from unfairly taxing donations to nonprofit organizations.

It is difficult to predict how the Supreme Court will rule in any case it takes up, even after oral arguments; King v. Burwell is no different. It is probably safe to assume that Justices Scalia, Alito and Thomas will rule for the petitioner (King) and that Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayer and Kagan will rule for respondent (Burwell), but it is difficult to judge which way Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Kennedy will rule. This being said, oral arguments still brought some interesting insight from the Court.